Skills for Growth

The Ratio Institute invites young scholars, including graduate students, in fields such as education, economics, political science, business administration, sociology and economic history to submit paper proposals for a cross disciplinary colloquium in Stockholm.

The aim of this colloquium was to bring together researchers in different fields working on skills, vocational education, on-the-job-training, youth unemployment, validation and labour market issues from a competence, innovation and growth perspective.

Despite massive investments in education in many countries there are major skills shortages in the private as well as the public sector. At the same time unemployment is high, especially among the young and immigrants. This indicate that there may be serious problems with over-education and mis-education as well as inefficient learning environments and lack of education of practical skills. The problems involved deserve to be studied a lot more.

The colloquium was a two-day workshop and includes both paper sessions and two keynote lectures held by internationally distinguished scholars within the fields of skills formation and education especially vocational education.

We are delighted to present Professor Anders Björklund, Professor, SOFI, Stockholm University and Associate Professor Lena Lindahl, also SOFI, Stockholm University as our keynote speakers.

For this colloquium we especially welcome papers dealing with the following issues:

Growth, innovation and learning

Wage-formation and skills

Causes of youth unemployment

Labour-market competence mismatch

Vocational education and innovation

The challenges of on-the-job-training

Validation of skills and practical knowledge

Policies to diminish these problems

Both theoretical and empirical papers are considered. The papers submitted are expected to be work in progress: It should be more than ideas, but still unpublished papers.